Clinician Researcher & Advocate

Dr Johanna Lynch is a clinician whose research innovations are built on curiosity and the pattern recognition of the generalist. Her PhD, entitled ‘Sense of Safety: a whole person approach to distress’ integrated clinical insights with international research and local stakeholder feedback to develop a new way to approach distress in primary care. Johanna sees a direct link between her years as a general practitioner and her life as a researcher and advocate. As someone who sees curiosity and awe as lifelong habits, she has learnt so much from her patients and their descriptions of their inner and outer worlds. It is her patients and their practical wisdom who have given her the bravery to challenge the status quo in how medicine understands mental distress. Johanna's research is filled with the voices of her patients and collaborators across the disciplines.

Researcher

Seeing a need for new ways to approach distress in primary care, Johanna wrote a paper that has been cited internationally across disciplines, in peer reviewed journals, theses, and health policy documents. This paper entitled: Beyond symptoms: defining primary care mental health assessment priorities, content and process was published in the Social Science and Medicine Journal (2012).

During her PhD, Dr Johanna Lynch also collaborated with a Norwegian research Professor Anna Luise Kirkengen to write an innovative book chapter entitled Biology and Experience intertwined: trauma, neglect and physical health in a book entitled Humanising Mental Health in Australia: A guide to trauma-informed approaches  (Benjamin,R., Haliburn, J., King, S (Eds).

Her PhD Sense of Safety: a whole person approach to distress has been acclaimed for its consultative inclusive methodology, involving collaboration with key international and Australian researchers. This PhD has been published by Routledge (2021) as a book entitled: A whole person approach to wellbeing: Building Sense of Safety. Her ongoing research is investigating ways to integrate scientific insights across the disciplines into care for the distressed. See www.senseofsafety.com

Dr Johanna’s research career began with the support of a Primary Care Research Education Development Fellowship (2008-2010) and continued with Commonwealth and Advance Queensland Scholarships to support her PhD (2016-2019). Post doctoral research has been funded by a Mayne Academy of General Practice grant, a UQ Promoting Women Fellowship and UQ Early Career Seed Funding. This research has been undertaken in the General Practice Clinical Unit at University of Queensland in collaboration with Australian and international researchers.

Johanna has presented on her research at the International Mental Health Conference (Gold Coast 2014), the International Mental Health Congress (Lille, France, 2015), the World Organisation of Family Doctors -WONCA (Melbourne 2008; Cairns 2017; online 2021), the Australian Society of Psychological Medicine (Melbourne, 2013, 2018 and 2019), the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (Chicago, 2018), the Australian Association for Academic Primary Care (2021) the International Childhood Trauma Conference (2018, 2022). She has also presented in primary care research departments in Tromso and Trondheim in Norway and Liverpool and Hull in the UK.

Clinician

Johanna underwent her medical training in medicine at University of Queensland (UQ), and further training in India and London before returning to Brisbane to become a Fellow of the Royal College of General Practitioners and later Fellow of the Australian Society for Psychological Medicine. She responded to a need in her community for those with mental distress in the context of childhood trauma and neglect. This need led her to undertake a post graduate certificate in grief and loss (at UQ), training through the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD), and professional training in trauma, attachment, internal family systems, mentalisation, hypnosis, narrative and sensorimotor therapies. She now offers online mentoring and supervision to individuals and groups of clinicians around the world. Contact hello@drjohannalynch.com for more information.

Establishing Integrate Place

In 2009 she established a transdisciplinary clinic named Integrate Place that pioneered respectful collaborative integration across the disciplines in a welcoming environment. Johanna took theoretical advances in the links between physical health and mind, and life story and wellbeing, and created a new way to care for people in distress. This clinic, accredited by ASCA (now BlueKnot foundation), had a team of psychologist, social worker, trauma-informed yoga therapy, art and music therapies at different times. The underlying philosophy of Integrate Place (2009-2013) became the foundation for Johanna’s ongoing clinical work, teaching, and research.

See a visual history of Integrate Place here